Beside The Points For Monday, Feb. 12, 2018

Things That Caught My Eye

Redmond “Red” Gerard won the first U.S. medal of Pyeongchang, taking a gold in the men’s slopestyle snowboarding competition. Gerard is the youngest — only 17 years old — male American to take a Winter Olympics gold medal since 1928. [NPR]

The Canadian women’s hockey team shut out the Olympic Athletes from Russia 5-0, thanks to Ann-Renee Desbiens making 18 saves over the course of the game. Canada is a juggernaut in women’s hockey, as this is its 21st straight win in Olympic competition. [CBC]

Semen Elistratov is one of the 169 athletes who are from Russia and competing under the Olympic banner rather than their country’s as part of Russia’s penalties incurred for operating a massive top-to-bottom doping operation. He’s also the first Olympic athlete from Russia to medal, taking a bronze in the 1500m short-track speed skating competition and used his time in the limelight to dedicate the medal to Russians banned from the game in “a hard and unfair way,” which normally would be standard nationalist jock talk but in this case spurred an investigation given the rules Olympic athletes have about making political statements. [BBC]

Congratulations to Norway, which led by Simen Hegstad Kruger took the gold, silver and bronze medal in the 15km + 15km cross country skiathlon event. Kruger was stuck in a collision early on and fell to last place out of 68 but mounted a comeback for the ages to finish first. [BBC]

North Korea and South Korea teamed up to play women’s hockey together, a fascinating diplomatic overture. The team fell to the Swiss 0-8 on Saturday, but the stunning display of unity is a potential opportunity for cross-border collaboration. The two countries have been technically at war since a 1953 armistice but proved no effort for the Bronze medalists of Sochi. [Reuters]

In a decisive playoff series, the London Spitfire defeated the upstart Houston Outlaws and then the powerhouse New York Excelsior in a 3-2 reverse sweep to win the first Overwatch League round one playoff series and the $100,000 that comes with. [Kotaku]

Leaks from Slack:

micah:

can I ask a non-sports fan dumb question: Is John McDaniels turning down that head coaching job basically proof that Belichick is gonna step aside soon?

neil:

If I had to bet, I would bet there is some kind of succession plan in place – not sure when, but McDaniels basically torpedoed his head coaching chances anywhere else by screwing the Colts at the last second

kyle:

yeah doesn’t have to be soon, but that was heavily implied by the salary cap stuff